Complete Study Guide for Legal Epistemology
Course year: 2022-2023
,Outline
1. Introduction: error
2. Error distribution: standard of proof especially Bard, Presumption of innocence, and
burden of proof
3. Rule of evidence: silence and confession
4. Rules of procedure (appeal)
, Chapter 1
Thinking About Error in the Law
A Road Map
- Core aims of criminal justice system
- Find out the truth about a crime and avoid false verdicts (error reduction)
- Error distribution: we all agree that convicting an innocent person is more
costly than acquiring a guilty one, so a bunch of doctrine and procedure has
grown in the common law about how to conduct trials so as to make it more
likely that, when error occurs, it will be false acquittal and not false
conviction
- miscellaneous/non epistemic policy value: concerns that do not explicitly
address trial error but focus on other issues important to the criminal justice
system (e.g. protection of the rights of the accused, social goods such as
sanctity of marriage in the sense that spouses cannot testify against each
other)
- Most scholars say finding out the truth is the most important of the three
- Epistemology, for Laudan, is the study of whether systems of investigation that
claim to be seeking the truth are well engineered to lead to true beliefs about the
world
- Despite the almost universal acceptance of the premise that a criminal trial is a
search for the truth, there’s uncertainty and confusion about whether the multiple
rules of proof, evidence, and procedure enhance or prevent discovery of truth
- Legal epistemology involves:
- 1. Determining which existing rules promote and which hinder truth seeking
- 2. Proposing changes in existing rules to eliminate or modify those rules that
hinder truth finding
- Legal epistemology is diWicult b/c non-epistemic values clash with epistemic
values:
- If we were serious about error reduction and recognize that juries reach
wrong verdict a remedy would be to put have a system of appeals for
acquittals and convictions
- We have that for latter, not former because clashes with double jeopardy
(can’t be tried for the same crime twice)
The Book as a Thought Experiment
Course year: 2022-2023
,Outline
1. Introduction: error
2. Error distribution: standard of proof especially Bard, Presumption of innocence, and
burden of proof
3. Rule of evidence: silence and confession
4. Rules of procedure (appeal)
, Chapter 1
Thinking About Error in the Law
A Road Map
- Core aims of criminal justice system
- Find out the truth about a crime and avoid false verdicts (error reduction)
- Error distribution: we all agree that convicting an innocent person is more
costly than acquiring a guilty one, so a bunch of doctrine and procedure has
grown in the common law about how to conduct trials so as to make it more
likely that, when error occurs, it will be false acquittal and not false
conviction
- miscellaneous/non epistemic policy value: concerns that do not explicitly
address trial error but focus on other issues important to the criminal justice
system (e.g. protection of the rights of the accused, social goods such as
sanctity of marriage in the sense that spouses cannot testify against each
other)
- Most scholars say finding out the truth is the most important of the three
- Epistemology, for Laudan, is the study of whether systems of investigation that
claim to be seeking the truth are well engineered to lead to true beliefs about the
world
- Despite the almost universal acceptance of the premise that a criminal trial is a
search for the truth, there’s uncertainty and confusion about whether the multiple
rules of proof, evidence, and procedure enhance or prevent discovery of truth
- Legal epistemology involves:
- 1. Determining which existing rules promote and which hinder truth seeking
- 2. Proposing changes in existing rules to eliminate or modify those rules that
hinder truth finding
- Legal epistemology is diWicult b/c non-epistemic values clash with epistemic
values:
- If we were serious about error reduction and recognize that juries reach
wrong verdict a remedy would be to put have a system of appeals for
acquittals and convictions
- We have that for latter, not former because clashes with double jeopardy
(can’t be tried for the same crime twice)
The Book as a Thought Experiment
